Keith Shirley

It’s a bit like waiting for a bus – Back in August I lamented about the lack of hot-desks in Carlow and now I find out that both the Shamrock Plaza and the Enterprise Board are going to have them.

Shamrock Plaza is being promoted by Jacqui McNabb (former Carlow Chamber of Commerce CEO). I met with her last week to review the offices and to talk to her about the facilities needed for hot desking. I am both happy and impressed to be able to say that she has covered all the points I could raise.

The building itself is located where Doyles of the Shamrock used to be – right on the Dublin/Kilkenny road in the centre of town. It’s a very impressive building with a finish that I hope other businesses will be inspired by. It’s always a pity to see a company move into a new premises and to let themselves down by using poor signs/flooring etc. There are a number of large corporate suites (with suspended floors) available which at the moment are completely open – you can configure them to match your requirements.It’s the small offices and hot-desk room that was most interesting for me.

The details are being finalised but the following were the points we discussed:

Lease Period: The offices will have short lease periods. This is important because in the current climate it’s hard to commit to a 5 year lease when you don’t know if you will still be in business. The vision for the hot desks is more of a mini office – you just rent the desk rather than an office. Real hot desking would involve leaving an empty desk at the end of the day. In this case you keep your desk – but if you still have it in 2 years then you need to make a commitment and upgrade.

Costs: Sorry – can’t say much about this yet and the details are being finalised. An office is available for 900 Euro a month – including phone line, power and internet link. The hot desk will be comparable. This is fantastic as it will allow people to try out an idea without having to sink all their savings into non productive assets. The hot desk includes a phone line and broadband.

Day-rental offices: There are no day rental offices as such – but they probably are not needed. Rented a meeting room for a day will probably cover most peoples needs.

Central Reception: The reception will be run by a Carlow company – AutoOffice – which I didn’t even know existed. They will provide full virtual admin services – answering the phone in your name, taking in post and deliveries and generally helping a small business to run efficiently and look like a bigger business. The phones are an interesting point – your bill be come via the central reception services – you don’t need to pay a seperate line rental.

Meeting rooms: There is a boardroom type meeting room available and a big room suitable for large meetings and training.

Out-off hours access: Everyone gets a little RFID chip that gives them 24 hour access. Obviously – if you are sharing an office with others you need to be a little more careful with securing your desk before you leave (this includes data protection issues).

Storage facilities: Each hot-desk will have some storage space with it. I spoke to Jacqui about providing extra space when needed but this might not happen.

Furnished desks: Furniture is included. It would kind of have to be. The good point is that it’s included in the standard office l;easing as well.

Parking: The building has underground parking as well as a few street level spots for short stays. It looks good and should avoid a lot of headaches.

Sometimes I just want to be able to connect my laptop to the mobile Internet without having dongles hanging out or resorting to cables. JoikuSpot allows me to do that and even share the connection.

What it Does

In a nutshell – JoikuSpot installs on your mobile phone (in my case a Nokia N95) and rebroadcasts your 3G connection as a WLAN hotspot.

In other words:
Laptop -> WLAN connection to Phone -> 3G Connection to Provider -> Internet

Why would you want to do this?

There are a couple of reasons:

- As mentioned – it reduces the amount of stuff hanging off your PC. I use a tablet PC and this allows me to leave the phone in my pocket. I can’t do this with bluetooth for all my devices.

- The WLAN connection can be shared. You can have multiple PC’s connected to the Internet via my phone. This is great in an emergency when your boardband link goes down.

Does it work?

It works great most of the time. It can be a little slow to start and every now and then it stops working but I’ve used it repeatedly for hours at a time. Used in connection with Psiloc Connect which I’ve mentioned previously it’s great on journeys. Psiloc connect picks up the best signal available and provides Joikuspot with a stable access point.

Is it secure?

Any WLAN link is not going to be completely secure. The JoikuSpot software is designed to be able to setup a VPN link. If you are working with any kind of sensitive data then you should consider that.

You should also setup a password for the WLAN hotspot. It will keep out the opportunists BUT only WEP security is available on the wireless link. If someone is determined to connect to the hotspot then they will. You still need firewall sofware on your PC.

Is it expensive?

There is a free version available but for me it was of limited use – you can’t check POP email with it (webmail is OK). The full version is currently 15 Euro on their shop.

Note: When I first bought the software it was over  a very slow GSM link in Achill Island. I was having problems getting the shop to work with the free version – but fair play to the providers – they listened to my comments and should have fixed it by now.

The time has arrived for me to reveal one of the best tools for rescuing PC’s that keep blue screening or freezing and rebooting. It’s a weird gooey liquid called Stabilant 22.

Don’t be put off by the rubbish website that has not been updated since 2001. This stuff can work wonders.

What does it do?

I won’t quote their website as they use words like amorphous and polymer. For the rest of us it should be enough to say it’s a contact enhancer. You spread it on electrical contacts where it does not conduct electricity until it comes under pressure. This is important with things like CPU contacts or memory. You would go crazy trying to put something on each individual contact but you need to avoid a short circuit at all costs.

The liquid helps make sure that the rough contacts (at a microscopic level) are smoothed out and the flow of electricity is much better. I’ve used this on a number of machines to fix blue screens  – even where everything else seemed ok.

I’d say the liquid can be used anywhere where good metal contacts are needed – inside PC’s, music equipment etc.

What does it NOT do?

You can’t use it on contacts that are corroded. That makes sense as the signal is failing before it gets as far as the stabilant. It can’t help must if the rest of the signal chain is not in order.

Price

It’s expensive – some will say overpriced. If you need it regularly it’s well worth it. If you just need it for some home equipment then I doubt it’s worth it for you.

The first bottle I bought was 200 Euro for 5ml. That lasted years however. The last one was about 60 Euro and I’m a long way from finished. In the meantime I believe it’s even cheaper. Those prices refer to the “pure” version of Stabilant. There is also one that is diluted with alcohol. This is great for working on pins in connectors – you can put on the diluted liquid and the alcohol evaporates off – leaving you with just what you need. You can also make your own diluted version from the pure version.

Time for another little secret of mine that has saved me huge amounts of trouble. If you are regularly fixing PC’s then you must have access to a site like DriverAgent.com.

Put simply – Driveragent runs a small piece of software on the PC that scans it and gives you a report on which drivers are out of date. It then gives you the opportunity to download those drivers from the manufacturer or their own website. That’s it – short and sweet and it just works. A screenshot of the report is below – just click to enlarge it.

I’ve worked on hundreds of PC’s over the past 20 years and I despair at the thought of how much time I’ve lost trying to find drivers for a PC. The pricing for Driveragent is currently just $29.95 for use on upto 10 PC’s. Compared to the time you would spend trying to find drivers on just one manufacturer site it’s a bargain.

If you are having problems with a PC crashing or running slowly – try the free report from DriverAgent to see what state your PC is in.

Next week I’ll put up a post on the blog with one of my absolutely best rescue tools – it will probably surprise you. To get the update automatically sign up for mail updates or add the RSS feed to your reader.

I’ve been using a piece of software called ABTutor recently and I’ve found it very useful. From a teachers perspective it allows me to monitor the work that the students are doing without breaking their concentration. Standing behind someone while they are trying to work can make people feel nervous.

The software has numerous useful features:

• You can broadcast your screen to all the students PC’s. This often works better than a projector for working in fine detail or with engineering drawings
• As mentioned you can monitor the students PCs – either one at a time or in a grid
• You can send a file to all the PC’s (e.g. A worksheet to be followed) or even launch a web page for them (removing problems with typos)
• You can temporarily block the Internet (is that cheers I hear from teachers?) or even block the whole PC if needed.

More details on the software are available from http://www.abtutor.com 

I’ve shown it to a number of teachers at this stage – and so far we have not had to open the user manual once. I always find that a very positive sign in software that can do so much.

An important point for schools – the price is also good. A new version is about to be released which costs 135 Euro if you buy 10 or more licenses. The magic is that you only need the license for the controlling PC (i.e The Teacher). The client licenses forthe students are free.

For the network administrator – If the PC supports it you can use the software to startup the PC, login, run updates and then shut it down afterwards. From my own tests it has quartered the time needed for standard updates that need to be done directly on PCs.